


Backstop

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [100]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Dollhouse, First Monday, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6519379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Daredevil/First Monday, Matt Murdock/Julian Lodge, balance</i> - after the disaster that is Elektra, Julian is good for Matt’s study habits; or, the Dollhouse needed to backstop Julian Lodge. Set pre-SGA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backstop

After the disaster with Elektra, Matt didn’t want to tell Foggy about Julian, because he wasn’t sure Foggy could cope with Julian being, well, a man. During the first semester of 1L, all Matt knew about Julian was that he came from a long line of attorneys and judges, he was damn smart, and he was ridiculously stuck-up. Matt had picked up a couple of other small details about Julian from listening to the other law students - Julian had wildly unruly hair and went to great lengths to tame it, he carried his own pepper (see above: ridiculously stuck-up), and he never set foot out of his apartment in less than business casual dress. At the beginning of the second semester of 1L, Julian asked Matt out in a straightforward, if a little old-fashioned way, and they went on a date, dinner and a night at the symphony. And then Matt asked him out in return, dinner and a concert in the park, and on the third date Julian kissed him, and then they were dating.  
  
Matt learned for himself that when Julian wasn’t using industrial-grade polymers to shellac his hair into place, it was soft, and Julian purred like a cat when Matt scratched his scalp. In the privacy of his own apartment, Julian was punctiliously neat (which was great for Matt, because he never had to risk tripping over a stray sock), but he wore old worn jeans and ratty t-shirts (and could be coaxed out of said jeans and t-shirts when Matt kissed him and tried to read his skin like Braille). Julian didn’t laugh often, barely cracked a smile (other students described it more properly as a smirk), but when he did laugh, he brayed like a donkey. It should have been annoying, but for some stupid reason it was cute, and Matt tried to make him laugh whenever possible. Julian also had a borderline eidetic memory, and he could recite whole sections of case law verbatim when asked. Sometimes, when Matt and Julian were curled up on Julian’s massive California King bed (it took up most of his studio apartment), Julian would nuzzle behind Matt’s ear and whisper to him, poetry or song lyrics or passages from random books.  
  
As it turned out, Foggy wholeheartedly approved of Matt’s dating Julian, if only because Julian’s militant study habits helped Matt get back on track to stay in law school after the disaster Elektra had wreaked on his grades.  
  
Foggy approved of Matt’s dating Julian a lot less after Julian vanished one day, right after their torts exam.  
  
“I don’t know what happened,” Foggy said. “Some suits in a black van rolled up and talked to Julian, some blonde woman said he needed to go for a treatment.”  
  
“They must have kidnapped him, because his apartment’s empty, Foggy!”  
  
“Marci said he went willingly.”  
  
Matt sighed.  
  
Foggy squeezed his shoulder. “Keep it together. We have a few more exams to get through. Freak out when they’re done, all right? You need to toe the line, and you know it.”  
  
“I do.” But he didn’t like it, how Julian had just - vanished. He didn’t have a reputation for being a nice guy, but he’d also been too well-bred to be so rude as to leave without a word. There were rumors that one of his high-powered relatives had pulled strings so he could finish law school somewhere Ivy League. Matt didn’t want to believe that Julian would just leave without a trace like that, but years later, he heard Julian had done a stint as clerk for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and that kind of spot was only available to lawyers who’d attended the alma maters of the justices, so he must have finished law school somewhere Ivy League.  
  
Matt wondered if Julian still carried his own pepper, had given up on taming his hair, still whispered literature and poetry to his lovers.  
  
And then one day Matt and Foggy and Karen were hanging out at Josie’s bar and someone had gotten hold of the remote for the TV and was flipping channels (and that person would get broken by Josie once she noticed), and Matt heard, for a split second, Julian’s voice.  
  
He was saying, “I, John Sheppard, do solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to receive in this matter now pending before the court is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”


End file.
